The three middies raced to the upper deck just in time to see Nanny, white-faced and trembling, emerge from the after conning1 tower.
“Murder! help! help!” he wailed2. “Oh, Clif, some one is down there. I heard a voice singing. Oh, let’s go away.”
“What is the matter?” demanded Joy, striving hard to conceal4 a laugh. “What in thunder did you see?”
“N-nothing, but I heard a cracked kind of a voice,” whimpered the little lad, almost in tears. “It—it seemed to come from the roof. Oh, the old tub is haunted! Let’s leave.”
“Never mind, youngster,” said Clif, kindly5. “We heard the voice, too. There’s some mystery about it, but it isn’t ghosts. That’s silly. Did you get the matches?”
Nanny shook his head vigorously. Trolley6 went forward and presently returned with a box he found in the captain’s cabin. Five minutes later a dense7 smoke was pouring from the after funnel8.
“I am afraid it is too late,” remarked Clif, watching the distant speck9 on the horizon. “That craft is bound south, and we are way to the eastward10 of her.”
“There is one thing we forgot when we were down aft,” suddenly observed Joy, placing one hand in the region of his fifth button. “We clean forgot the grub.”
“That’s true,” agreed Trolley.
“I won’t go down there if I starve,” came from Nanny, his face paling.
“We will have to do something,” said Clif, decisively. “There must be food on board, and water, too. I saw several boxes and tanks below. I don’t like the shades of departed Frenchmen, but I’ll do a great deal to keep from starving.”
“Suppose we go down and make plenty noise,” suggested Trolley. “We take clubs and—wait a bit.”
He hurried forward, and presently reappeared from the officers’ quarters with one hand clutching a pistol and the other a long, wicked-looking sword. Flourishing the latter, he cried:
“I cut the neck of any ghost now. Come! we march down right away.”
“He! he!” laughed Nanny; “Trolley, you have a different class of ghosts in Japan than those in other countries, I guess. Swords and guns are no good.”
“We try, anyway,” placidly11 replied the Japanese youth. “Who come with me?”
“All of us,” promptly12 announced Clif.
“Who go first?” was Trolley’s next question.
“You, confound your thick head!” retorted Joy. “Haven’t you got the weapons?”
Seeing no loophole, the Jap gingerly approached the door of the conning tower. Clif, who was close behind, suddenly uttered a deep groan13.
Trolley dropped the sword and made a wild leap backward. A series of weird14 Japanese expletives came from his lips, then his jaw15 dropped when he caught sight of Clif’s laughing face.
“Oh, you fool me, eh?” he said, slowly. “Well, I go down and fool ghost.”
With that he vanished through the open door of the conning tower.
“We can’t let him have all the fun,” declared Clif. “Come on.”
When the three—Nanny accompanied them—reached the lower deck they found Trolley seated upon a chest, calmly surveying the field. He held the revolver in one hand, and the sword at a parry in the other.
“No hear anything yet,” he said, grinning. “I guess——”
“Jose! Jose!”
“Gosh! there it is again,” ejaculated Nanny. “Let’s go back. I don’t want——”
“Jose! tengo hombre! Dame17 un galleta.”
The words ended in a wail3 that sent cold chills through the cadets. For a moment it was in the minds of all to beat a hasty retreat, but Clif set his teeth, and said, determinedly18:
“I won’t be frightened away from here again. Some one is playing us a scurvy19 trick. That wasn’t French; it was Spanish. If any chump——”
“Ach, du lieber!”
Clif sat down upon a pile of hammocks and held up both hands in disgust.
“And German, too!” he exclaimed. “Now what on earth does it mean? Where is the fellow, anyway?”
Joy was hungrily overhauling20 a locker22 which seemed filled with inviting-looking cans and jars.
“Don’t ask any foolish questions,” he said. “Here’s potted meats and jams and ship biscuit. Nanny, you half-sized idiot, get some water out of that breaker, and be durned quick about it.”
It was well on toward noon, and the boys were beginning to feel the gnawing23 of their naturally healthy appetites. They were also growing accustomed to the mysterious voice, so without more ado they joined Joy in his onslaught on the contents of the locker.
They were not disturbed while they attended to the pleasant business before them, so they made out fairly well.
“For this make us truly thankful,” said Joy, with a satisfied sigh as he polished off the last morsel24 before him.
“I say,” spoke25 up Nanny, “we’re better off than that cad, Judson Greene, even if we have a polyglot26 ghost in our midst.”
“Judson is bound to return,” said Clif, grimly. “When he does we’ll have a reckoning.”
Trolley lazily threw himself back upon a bench and observed:
“What we do now, fellows? We no can stay out here. Maybe ship no come.”
“What do you propose, your highness?” asked Joy, with fine sarcasm27. “Shall we walk or take a cake of soap and wash ourselves ashore28?”
“It’s a pity we can’t carry Le Destructeur into some port,” said Clif, musingly29. “She seems to be seaworthy, and I guess the coal supply is all right.”
Trolley sat up and brought his hands together with an emphatic30 gesture.
“We do it; we do it,” he cried, excitedly. “I know how to run marine31 engine. I learn a little in Japan. Hurray! you be captain, and I be engineer. Hurray!”
Clif stared at him for a moment, then his face brightened.
“By George, Trolley, that’s the very ticket,” he exclaimed. “If you can run an engine we’ll take the old tank into the nearest port. There are charts and [Pg 196]instruments in the captain’s cabin. And there are four of us—five if that chump comes back—and we ought to do it.”
Clif began to pace up and down the narrow room. That he was greatly taken with the idea was plainly evident. Suddenly while he chanced to be near the extreme after end, the mysterious voice wailed:
“Ach, du lieber! Carramba! Dame agua pronto!”
With a bound Clif reached the spot whence the sound seemed to come. He grasped the knob of a small trap-door in the wooden lining32 of the hull33, and gave a quick wrench34.
Something fluttered out and fell to the floor with a flapping of wings.
It was a parrot!
“Ha! ha! ha!”
“Ho! ho! This is rich!”
“Ha! ha! If I d-don’t stop laughing I’ll die!” gasped35 Clif. “Fancy being—ha! ha!—fooled by a pet parrot.”
The four boys were rolling upon the floor in an ecstasy36 of mirth. And over in the corner, eying them solemnly, was the parrot.
The poor bird was thin and its feathers hung down in a bedraggled manner. It looked as if it had undergone a siege with a cage full of monkeys.
“He! he!” it suddenly cackled. “Povre Juanito! Tengo sed. Ach, du lieber! Sacre!”
Clif moistened several sea biscuit in water and fed the s............